PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 250,385 words · 359 reading sections
Contents
Produced by Charles Franks, John Hagerson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt. D. ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt. D. _Chaps. I to XII_ VERSE 17. THE ASCENSION (Acts i. 1-14) THE THEME OF ACTS (Acts i. 1, 2; xxviii. 30, 31) THE FORTY DAYS (Acts i. 3) THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW (…
414 wordsSECTION 2The Ascension
'The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2. Until the day in which He was taken up, after that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the Apostles whom He had chosen: 3. To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, …
720 wordsSECTION 3The Ascension
The statement of the theme of the book is followed by a brief summary of the events between the Resurrection and Ascension. Luke had spoken of these in the end of his Gospel, but given no note of time, and run together the events of the day of the Resurrection and of the following weeks, so that it might appear, as has…
670 wordsSECTION 4The Ascension
These eleven poor men were not left by their Master with a hard task and no help. He bade them 'wait' for the promised Holy Spirit, the coming of whom they had heard from Him when in the upper room He spoke to them of 'the Comforter.' They were too feeble to act alone, and silence and retirement were all that He enjoin…
695 wordsSECTION 5The Ascension
Most true to human nature is that continued gaze upwards after He had passed into the hiding brightness of the glory-cloud. How many of us know what it is to look long at the spot on the horizon where the last glint of sunshine struck the sails of the ship that bore dear ones away from us! It was fitting that angels, w…
270 wordsSECTION 6The Theme Of Acts
'The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. 2. Until the day in which He was taken up.'--ACTS i. 1, 2. 'And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, 31. Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which conc…
672 wordsSECTION 7The Theme Of Acts
If, then, we put these two things--the beginning and the ending of the Acts--together, I think we get some thoughts about what Christ began to do and teach on earth; what He continues to do and teach in heaven; and how small and fragmentary a share in that work each individual servant of His has. Let us look at these p…
764 wordsSECTION 8The Theme Of Acts
II. But then, secondly, we have to notice what Christ continues to do and to teach after His Ascension. I have already suggested that the phraseology of the first of my texts naturally leads to the conclusion that the theme of this Book of the Acts is the continuous work of the ascended Saviour, and that the language …
663 wordsSECTION 9The Theme Of Acts
On us, and in us, and by us, and for us, if we are His servants, Jesus Christ is working all through the ages. He is the Lord of Providence, He is the King of history, in His hand is the book with the seven seals; He sends His Spirit, and where His Spirit is He is; and what His Spirit does He does. And thus He continue…
709 wordsSECTION 10The Theme Of Acts
What a lesson of lowliness and of diligence it gives us! The jangling church at Corinth fought about whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas was the man to lead the Church, and the experience has been repeated over and over again. 'Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every…
542 wordsSECTION 11The Forty Days
'To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.'--ACTS i. 3. The forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension have distinctly marked characteristics. They are unlike to the period bef…
688 wordsSECTION 12The Forty Days
How precious all this is as a revelation of the impotence of death in regard to Him and us! It assures us of the perpetuity of His love. He showed Himself after His passion as the same old Self, the same old tender Lover. His appearances then prepare us for the last vision of Him in the Apocalypse, in which we see His …
716 wordsSECTION 13The Unknown To-Morrow
For us, too, these forty days are full of blessed lessons, teaching us that real communion with Jesus is attained by faith in Him, and that He is still working in and for us, and is still present with us. The joy with which the disciples saw Him ascend should live on in us as we think of Him enthroned. The hope that th…
761 wordsSECTION 14The Unknown To-Morrow
I need not remind you how merciful and good it is that it is so. Therefore coming sorrows do not diffuse anticipatory bitterness as of tainted water percolating through gravel, and coming joys are not discounted, and the present has a reality of its own, and is not coloured by what is to come. Then this being so--what…
699 wordsSECTION 15The Apostolic Witnesses
(c) The great work we have to do in the future is to be witnesses for Christ. This is the meaning of all life; we can do it in joy and in sorrow, and we shall bear a charmed life till it be done. So the words of the text are a promise of preservation. Then, dear brethren, how do you stand fronting that Unknown? How ca…
688 wordsSECTION 16The Apostolic Witnesses
I. First, then, the Witnesses. Here we have the 'head of the Apostolic College,' the 'primate' of the Twelve, on whose supposed primacy--which is certainly not a 'rock'--such tremendous claims have been built, laying down the qualifications and the functions of an Apostle. How simply they present themselves to his min…
686 wordsSECTION 17The Apostolic Witnesses
Their task was apparently a humbler, really a far more important one. Their place was apparently a lowlier, really a loftier one. They had to lay broad and deep the basis for all the growth and grace of the Church, in the facts which they witnessed. Their work abides; and when the Celestial City is revealed to our long…
714 wordsSECTION 18The Apostolic Witnesses
And my belief is that the course of modern 'apologetics,' as they are called--methods of defending Christianity--has followed too slavishly the devious course of modern antagonism, and has departed from its real stronghold when it has consented to argue the question on these (as I take them to be) lower and less suffic…
698 wordsSECTION 19The Apostolic Witnesses
Would not the testimony which can be alleged for Christ's Resurrection be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so, why is it not enough to guarantee this too? If, as nobody denies, the Early Church, within ten years of Christ's Resurrection, believed in His Resurrection, and were ready to go, and did, many of…
745 wordsSECTION 20The Apostolic Witnesses
III. There is a final consideration connected with these words, which I must deal with very briefly--the importance of the fact which is thus borne witness to. I have already pointed out that the Resurrection of Christ is viewed in Scripture in three aspects: in its bearing upon His nature and work, as a pattern for o…
797 wordsSECTION 21The Abiding Gift And Its Transitory Accompaniments
There is nothing between us and darkness, despair, death, but that ancient message, 'I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was raised the third day according to the Scr…
759 wordsSECTION 22The Abiding Gift And Its Transitory Accompaniments
But if we look carefully at Luke's words, we see that what filled the house was not agitated air, or wind, but 'a sound as of wind.' The language implies that there was no rush of atmosphere that lifted a hair on any cheek, or blew on any face, but only such a sound as is made by tempest. It suggested wind, but it was …
691 wordsSECTION 23The Abiding Gift And Its Transitory Accompaniments
As symbols preceded, tokens followed. The essential fact of Pentecost is neither the sound and fire, nor the speaking with other tongues, but the communication of the Holy Spirit. The sign and result of that was the gift of utterance in various languages, not their own, nor learned by ordinary ways. No twisting of the …
605 wordsSECTION 24The Fourfold Symbols Of The Spirit
'A rushing mighty wind.' ... 'Cloven tongues like as of fire.' ... 'I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh.'--ACTS ii. 2, 3, 17. 'Ye have an unction from the Holy One.'--1 JOHN ii. 20. Wind, fire, water, oil,--these four are constant Scriptural symbols for the Spirit of God. We have them all in these fragments o…
765 wordsSECTION 25The Fourfold Symbols Of The Spirit
And as thus the life-giving Spirit imparts Himself according to higher laws than we can grasp, so in like manner the life that is derived from it is a life which is its own law. The Christian conscience, touched by the Spirit of God, owes allegiance to no regulations or external commandments laid down by man. The Chris…
690 wordsSECTION 26The Fourfold Symbols Of The Spirit
You will remember, too, how our Lord Himself employs the same metaphor when He speaks about His coming to bring fire on the earth, and His longing to see it kindled into a beneficent blaze. In this connection the fire is a symbol of a quick, triumphant energy, which will transform us into its own likeness. There are tw…
710 wordsSECTION 27The Fourfold Symbols Of The Spirit
III. Then once more, take that other metaphor, 'I will pour out of My Spirit.' That implies an emblem which is very frequently used, both in the Old and in the New Testament, viz., the Spirit as water. As our Lord said to Nicodemus: 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of …
778 wordsSECTION 28The Fourfold Symbols Of The Spirit
You are anointed to be prophets that you may make known Him who has loved and saved you, and may go about the world evidently inspired to show forth His praise, and make His name glorious. That anointing calls and fits you to be priests, mediators between God and man, bringing God to men, and by pleading and persuasion…
621 wordsSECTION 29Peter'S First Sermon
'This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. 33. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. 34. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unt…
682 wordsSECTION 30Peter'S First Sermon
But, a listener might ask, what has this witness of yours to do with Joel's prophecy, or with this speaking with tongues? The answer follows in the last part of the sermon. The risen Jesus has ascended up; that is inseparable from the fact of resurrection, and is part of our testimony. He is 'exalted by,' or, perhaps, …
652 wordsSECTION 31Peter'S First Sermon
Peter's answer lays down two conditions: repentance and baptism. The former is often taken in too narrow a sense as meaning sorrow for sin, whereas it means a change of disposition or mind, which will be accompanied, no doubt, with 'godly sorrow,' but is in itself deeper than sorrow, and is the turning away of heart an…
868 wordsSECTION 32Peter'S First Sermon
Verses 46 and 47 add an outline of the beautiful daily life of the community, which was, like their liberality, the outcome of the feeling of brotherhood, intensified by the sense of the gulf between them and the crooked generation from which they had separated themselves. Luke shows it on two sides. Though they had se…
389 wordsSECTION 33The Name Above Every Name
'Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.'--ACTS ii. 36. It is no part of my purpose at this time to consider the special circumstances under which these words were spoken, nor even to enter upon an exposition of their whole…
768 wordsSECTION 34The Name Above Every Name
There is brought into view, too, prominently, the side of Christ's sufferings which we are all apt to forget--the common human side of His agonies and His pains. I know that a certain school of preachers, and some unctuous religious hymns, and other forms of composition, dwell, a great deal too much for reverence, upon…
684 wordsSECTION 35The Name Above Every Name
And then we find such words as these: 'If we believe that _Jesus_ died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him': I think any one that reads with sympathy must feel how very much closer to our hearts that consolation comes, 'Jesus rose again,' than even the mighty word which the Ap…
733 wordsSECTION 36The Name Above Every Name
I cannot see less in the contents of the Jewish idea, the prophetic idea, of the Messias, than these points: divine inspiration or anointing; a sufferer who is to redeem; the fulfiller of all the rapturous visions of psalmist and of prophet in the past. And so, when Peter stood up amongst that congregation of wonderin…
700 wordsSECTION 37The Name Above Every Name
So in regard to His Resurrection and glorious Ascension to the right hand of God. We have not only to think of the solitary man raised from the grave and caught up to the throne. If it were only 'Jesus' who rose and ascended, His Resurrection and Ascension might be as much to us as the raising of Lazarus, or the raptur…
711 wordsSECTION 38The Name Above Every Name
And so, dear friends, our thoughts to-day all point to this lesson--do not you content yourselves with a maimed Christ. Do not tarry in the Manhood; do not think it enough to cherish reverence for the nobility of His soul, the gentle wisdom of His words, the beauty of His character, the tenderness of His compassion. Al…
261 wordsSECTION 39A Fourfold Cord
'And they continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.'--ACTS ii. 42. The Early Church was not a pattern for us, and the idea of its greatly superior purity is very largely a delusion. But still, though that be true, the occasional glimpses that we get at int…
828 wordsSECTION 40A Fourfold Cord
But, of course, there was necessarily involved in the story a certain amount of what we now call doctrine--that is, theological teaching--because one cannot tell the story of Jesus Christ, as it is told in the four Gospels, without impressing upon the hearers the conviction that His nature was divine and that His death…
730 wordsSECTION 41A Fourfold Cord
Now, all these circumstances, or almost all of them, that drove the primitive believers together, are at an end, and the tendencies of this day are rather to drive Christian people apart than to draw them together. Differences of position, occupation, culture, ways of looking at things, views of Christian truth and the…
780 wordsSECTION 42A Fourfold Cord
Is your house like that? Is your daily life like that? Do you bring the sacred and the secular as close together as that? Are the dying words of your Master, 'This do in remembrance of Me,' written by you over everything you do? And so is all life worship, and all worship hope? III. The last thing here is habitual dev…
538 wordsSECTION 43A Pure Church An Increasing Church
'And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.'--ACTS ii. 47. 'And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved.'--(R. V.) You observe that the principal alterations of these words in the Revised Version are two: the one the omission of 'the church,' the other the substitution of 'w…
777 wordsSECTION 44A Pure Church An Increasing Church
Notice, and that but for a moment, for I shall have to deal with it more especially at another part of this discourse,--the specific action which is here ascribed to Him. _He_ adds to the Church, not _we_, not our preaching, not our eloquence, our fervour, our efforts. These may be the weapons in His hands, but the han…
881 wordsSECTION 45A Pure Church An Increasing Church
Now, if all this be true, it is possible for worldly and stagnant communities calling themselves 'Churches' to thwart Christ's purpose, and to make it both impossible and undesirable that He should add to them souls for whom He has died. It is a solemn thing to feel that we may clog Christ's chariot-wheels, that there …
686 wordsSECTION 46A Pure Church An Increasing Church
Now I have but two things to say about that. If that be the description of the kind of folk that come into a Christian Church, the duties of that Church are very plainly marked. And the first great one is to see to it that the community help the growth of its members. There are Christian Churches--I do not say whether …
566 wordsSECTION 47'Then Shall The Lame Man Leap As An Hart'
'Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. 2. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; 3. Who, seeing Peter and John about …
706 wordsSECTION 48'Then Shall The Lame Man Leap As An Hart'
Some quick touch of pity shot through the two friends' hearts, which did not need to be spoken in order that each might feel it to be shared by the other. So they paused, and, as was in keeping with their characters, Peter took speech in hand, while John stood by assenting. Purposed devotion is well delayed when postpo…
683 wordsSECTION 49'Then Shall The Lame Man Leap As An Hart'
The interrupted purpose of devotion could now be pursued, but with a gladsome addition to the company. How natural is that 'walking and leaping and praising God'! The new power seemed so delightful, so wonderful, that sober walking did not serve. It was a strange way of going into the Temple, but people who are borne a…
695 wordsSECTION 50'The Prince Of Life'
These were daring words to speak in the Temple to that crowd. But the humble fisherman had been filled with the Spirit, who is the Strengthener, and the fear of man was dead in him. If we had never heard of Pentecost, we should need to invent something of the sort to make intelligible the transformation of these timid …
671 wordsSECTION 51'The Prince Of Life'
The juxtaposition throws a strong light on the people's motive for rejecting Jesus. The rulers may have condemned Him for blasphemy, but the people had a more practical reason, and in it no doubt the rulers shared. It was not because He claimed to be the Messiah that they gave Him up to Pilate, but because He would not…
876 wordsSECTION 52'The Prince Of Life'
The fact of the Resurrection sets the fact of the Death in another light. Meditating on these twin facts, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, we hear Himself speaking as He did to John in Patmos: 'I am the Living One who became dead, and lo, I am alive for evermore!' If we try to listen with the ears of these first h…
569 wordsSECTION 53The Healing Power Of The Name
'And His name through faith in His name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.'--ACTS iii. 16. Peter said, 'Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?' ea…
672 wordsSECTION 54The Healing Power Of The Name
The Early Church had a symbol for Jesus Christ, a fish, to which they were led because the Greek word for a fish is made up of the initials of the words which they conceived to be the Name. And what was it? '_Jesus Christ_, _God's Son_, _Saviour_'; _Jesus_, humanity; _Christ_, the apex of Revelation, the fulfilment of …
873 wordsSECTION 55The Healing Power Of The Name
And so, brethren, here is the reason--I do not say the only reason, but the main one, and that which most affects us--for the slow progress, and even apparent failure, of Christianity. It has fallen into the hands of a Church that does not half believe its own Gospel. By reason of formality and ceremonial and sacerdota…
697 wordsSECTION 56The Healing Power Of The Name
III. And now, lastly, note the effects of the power of the Name. The Apostle puts in two separate clauses what, in the case in hand, was really one thing--'hath made this man strong,' and 'hath given him perfect soundness.' Ah! we can part the two, cannot we? There is the disease, the disease of an alienated heart, of…
586 wordsSECTION 57The Servant Of The Lord
'Unto you first God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, In turning away every one of you from his iniquities.'--ACTS iii. 26. So ended Peter's bold address to the wondering crowd gathered in the Temple courts around him, with his companion John and the lame man whom they had healed. A glance at his…
690 wordsSECTION 58The Servant Of The Lord
I would put it to any fair-minded man whether the psychological facts of this sudden maturing of these childish minds, and their sudden change from slinking cowards into heroes who did not blanch before the torture and the scaffold, are accountable, if you strike out the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost? It s…
675 wordsSECTION 59The Servant Of The Lord
But, at all events, we have in our text the Apostle looking back to that dim, mysterious Figure which rises up with shadowy lineaments out of the great prophecy of 'Isaiah,' and thrilling with awe and wonder, as he sees, bit by bit, in the Face painted on the prophetic canvas, the likeness of the Face into which he had…
694 wordsSECTION 60The Servant Of The Lord
There is an old superstition that lightning turned whatever it struck towards the point from which the flash came, so that a tree with its thousand leaves had each of them pointed to that quarter in the heavens where the blaze had been. And so Christ, when He flings out the beneficent flash that slays only our evil, a…
687 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.